100+1 Students
#008 Pant Suresh Raj × JAPAN

Nationality: Nepal

Enrolled school: Meisei Institute of Cybernetics

Interview

2 February 2015

Influenced by Japanese style punctuality

Pant Suresh Raj had been interested in Japan since he was a child, and in researching about Japan on the Internet, he found that it was, "a country with friendly people, that it is safe among the nations of the world, convenient, and livable. He continued to think, "I want to go to Japan," since he was 13 years old. He managed a clothing shop after graduating from high school, but he only thought more and more about Japan. He finally handed over the shop to a friend and came to Japan in May 2013.

Raj--who had long had great admiration for Japan--was surprised to find a variety of culture gaps when he first arrived. There was a major difference in the sense of time. "When I first came to Japan, there were times when I had checked the train schedule and then gone to the station but couldn't catch the train even though I was just two seconds late. In Nepal it is a matter of course that the train will be late, so I was surprised to find that trains in Japan are right on time. In addition, at school and at the part time job, too, it counts as late even if you are just five minutes behind. Since then, I have learned the Japanese style and set out to be there ahead of time. When I meet friends from Nepal and they show up late I get mad and say, 'Why can't you be punctual!'", Raj says with a smile.

Going forward, I want to live in Japan and work with Japanese people

Raj says that he was even more fascinated by his experiences with how kind and gentle Japanese people are. Japanese try to help people who are having trouble, even when they don't know the language, by using gestures. At work, for example, people from Nepal and other countries get mad at me if I make a mistake, even though they haven't shown me how to do it. But when I first worked at a bento lunch factory in Japan, Japanese people didn't get mad at me when I made mistakes, and instead, they politely showed me how to do it over and over until I got it. If you can work with a Japanese boss who will show you how to do things, even foreigners who don't know Japanese at all can do a good job."

Also, in seeing Japanese people spontaneously clean up not only around their own homes and offices, but also in shared areas and areas that are not their own, Raj says he could feel the depth of awareness and consideration that Japanese people have. "I want to tell Nepalese people the great things about Japan. If we take the initiative to act, then the children and people around who see these actions will imitate them and everyone will change. These are the things that make Japan so appealing, and why I want to live here for a long time going forward as well. Toward that end, I want to study Japanese very hard right now, go to college, and then work with in Japan with Japanese people," Raj says. He is spending productive days, studying Japanese with the great incentive of realizing his dreams.